Men at Play: A Working Understanding of Professional Hockey by Michael A. Robidoux (review)

humanities 463 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 industrial workplace, by giving new opportunities to demonstrate their abilities and class solidarity, while incorporating them as professional athletes and consumers into marketplace sport. He is sensitive to the many barriers which faced the Aboriginal peoples, women, and immigrants, and their achievements in the face of them. He draws upon his own considerable scholarship on Maritime sports history to show some of the distinct developments and traditions of the regions. Calling this reviewer to task for his Ontario-focused >Canadian= history, Howell makes a telling case for a much more nuanced understanding of pan-Canadian sports culture, arguing >that in many ways sport in hinterland regions, and among marginalized peoples and ethnic minorities, is as important as that of elite groups in the metropolis.= His only blind spot seems to be about masculinities . His chapter on >bodies= focuses almost exclusively on the ways in which sports has shaped female bodies, leaving the much greater influence that sports has waged on males and their bodies unexamined. Blood, Sweat and Cheers does assume a good deal of social theory and Canadian history. I recommend it to my undergraduate students not as a text but as a study guide at the end of the course. But it certainly achieves its purpose >as an introduction to the way in which social historians approach the history of sport.= For both specialist and non-specialist alike, it provides a stimulating, comprehensive survey of this important area. It=s an extremely important contribution. (BRUCE KIDD) Michael A. Robidoux. Men at Play: A Working Understanding of Professional Hockey McGill-Queen=s University Press. viii, 222. $70.00, $27.95 Michael Robidoux, who now teaches at the University of Ottawa, spent the 1996-97 season travelling with and studying the >Troy Reds,= an American Hockey League (AHL) team. Following the demise of the International Hockey League, the AHL is now the primary farm system for NHL teams. The professional players in the AHL all aspire to play in the NHL; only a few actually do. Robidoux documents the daily lives of the players and the team: practices, games, initiation ceremonies for rookies, the training room, and travel. He identifies three significant, and interconnected, features of working life at this level of professional sport as these players B mainly from the Canadian Junior system, but also from American universities and Europe B learned to be >pros.= The first is what Robidoux terms >homogenized masculinity.= Rookie players must endure an initiation ceremony which, if successful, permits them to be a part of the team as a professional player. But a second and more implicit part of the bargain is that players must adopt a very limited view of what it is to be a man. While the job itself, particularly given the style of play that is expected in the AHL, involves adopting a physically 464 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 dominant style of masculinity, that demand is repeated also for off-ice behaviour. Adopting that style is rewarded with acceptance by established players and by management, but it means that players must abandon other aspects of their identity and their personal development. Robidoux identifies the second significant feature of the life of players at this level of professional sport as becoming a >commodity.= This is a relatively standard critique of professional sport B players are highly rewarded, but they are also bought and sold/drafted and traded just like commodities. However, this notion takes on much greater significance in the AHL. Because the AHL is the >farm system= for the NHL, >[t]he players are literally cultivated on the farm; only those with suitable qualities are Apicked@ to be used in the NHL market. The cultivation period, moreover, is limited, and those who do not develop sufficiently are eventually replaced with new Astock.@= The third feature is the players= powerlessness in the face of a totally controlling, continually demanding management. It is not difficult to control these men, despite (or perhaps because of) their adoption of a >homogenized masculinity.= The players are living out their dream, and...